Ineffable. But Effing Anyway.

I will consult my physics buddy to help explain in scientific terms this not-uncommonly observed way that light through pine needles displays as radians along concentric circles of light.  On the other hand,  understanding the chemistry of the paint doesn’t add to our appreciation of a masterful work of art.

I see this display often,  but a photograph that captures this phenomenon is rare in my archives, other than memory.

Rarer still–a once in a lifetime experience for me, and the window is closing–is the view of radians, that quite by accident, I observed this week in thin air. Thin, except for literally hundreds of waving webs of floating, or “ballooning” spiders.

I’ve written about the “gossamer spiders” before, observing a dozen or two within a few minutes during very dry, clear windows fall days over the decades. That spectacle alone makes goose bumps.

But on this occasion that I struggle unsuccessfully to adequately describe so that the hair on your arms bristle, too, there were so many distant overlapping and shining strands that, for just a few seconds, I saw this circle-of-light pattern in a tapestry of organic fiber-optic floating life-lines.

Each filament lofted a hopeful tiny spider, borne on a waft of wind that had just brushed gently across the north ridge. With this signal, an entire neighborhood of spiders let go at once, and I happened to see them as the passed overhead, backlit by a brilliant sun.

I had chanced to look up as I began climbing the ladder to clean gutters.

One never knows when they might be overcome by the ineffable. Does one?